The lamp was taken down, and the conversation turned from himself.

“May I bear it to your carriage, madame?” he asked, as she moved to leave, having made it her own, while her footman carried out the smaller articles she had bought to the equipage.  She bowed in silence; she was very exclusive, she was not wholly satisfied with herself for having conversed thus with a Chasseur d’Afrique in a Moor’s bazaar.  Still, she vaguely felt pity for this man; she equally vaguely desired to serve him.

“Wait, M. Victor!” she said, as he closed the door of her carriage.  “I accepted your chessmen last night, but you are very certain that it is impossible I can retain them on such terms.”

A shadow darkened his face.

“Let your dogs break them then, madame.  They shall not come back to me.”

“You mistake—­I did not mean that I would send them back.  I simply desire to offer you some equivalent for them.  There must be something that you wish for?—­something which would be acceptable to you in the life you lead?”

“I have already named the only thing I desire.”

He had been solicitous to remember and sustain the enormous difference in their social degrees; but at the offer of her gifts, of her patronage, of her recompense, the pride of his old life rose up to meet her own.

“To be forgotten?  A sad wish!  Nay, surely life in a regiment of Africa cannot be so cloudless that it can create in you no other?”

“It is not.  I have another.”

“Then tell it to me; it shall be gratified.”

“It is to enjoy a luxury long ago lost forever.  It is—­to be allowed to give the slight courtesy of a gentleman without being tendered the wage of a servant.”

She understood him; she was moved, too, by the inflexion of his voice.  She was not so cold, not so negligent, as the world called her.

“I had passed my word to grant it; I cannot retract,” she answered him, after a pause.  “I will press nothing more on you.  But—­as an obligation to me—­can you find no way in which a rouleau of gold would benefit your men?”

“No way that I can take it for them.  But, if you care indeed to do them a charity, a little wine, a little fruit, a few flowers (for there are those among them who love flowers), sent to the hospital, will bring many benedictions on your name, madame.  They lie in infinite misery there!”

“I will remember,” she said simply, while a thoughtful sadness passed over her brilliant face.  “Adieu, M. le Caporal; and if you should think better of your choice, and will allow your name to be mentioned by me to his Majesty, send me word through my people.  There is my card.”

The carriage whirled away down the crooked street.  He stood under the tawny awning of the Moorish house, with the thin, glazed card in his hand.  On it was printed: 

“Mme. la Princesse Corona d’Amague,

“Hotel Corona, Paris.”